Prisoners of Poverty Abroad

By Helen Campbell

DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "Prisoners of Poverty Abroad" by Helen Campbell. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.

• Language: English
• Publisher: DigiCat
• Release date: Sep 16, 2022
• ISBN: 8596547342595

Helen Campbell

Helen came to writing and illustrating children’s stories when she retired and absolutely loves it. Covid lockdown gave her the time and opportunity to explore this newfound love and the first Angry Albert Alligator book was written closely followed by this one. She recounts that her head is brimming over with stories and just hopes that they all get the chance to be published and above all, she hopes children and their mums and dads, grandmas and grandpas, and all the families all over the world, enjoy her work.

Book preview

Helen Campbell

Prisoners of Poverty Abroad

EAN 8596547342595

DigiCat, 2022

Contact: [e-mail]

Table of Contents

PRISONERS OF POVERTY ABROAD.

CHAPTER I.

BOTH SIDES OF THE SEA.

CHAPTER II.

IN TRAFALGAR SQUARE.

CHAPTER III.

THE SWEATING SYSTEM IN GENERAL.

CHAPTER IV.

AMONG THE SWEATERS.

CHAPTER V.

CHILD OF THE EAST END.

CHAPTER VI.

AMONG THE DRESSMAKERS.

CHAPTER VII.

NELLY, A WEST-END MILLINER'S APPRENTICE.

CHAPTER VIII.

LONDON SHIRT-MAKERS.

CHAPTER IX.

THE TALE OF A BARROW.

CHAPTER X.

STREET TRADES AMONG WOMEN.

CHAPTER XI.

LONDON SHOP-GIRLS.

CHAPTER XII.

FROM COVENT GARDEN TO THE EEL-SOUP MAN IN THE BOROUGH.

CHAPTER XIII.

WOMEN IN GENERAL TRADES.

CHAPTER XIV.

FRENCH AND ENGLISH WORKERS.

CHAPTER XV.

FRENCH BARGAIN COUNTERS.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE CITY OF THE SUN.

CHAPTER XVII.

DRESSMAKERS AND MILLINERS IN PARIS.

CHAPTER XVIII.

A SILK-WEAVER OF PARIS.

CHAPTER XIX.

IN THE RUE JEANNE D'ARC.

CHAPTER XX.

FROM FRANCE TO ITALY.

CHAPTER XXI.

PRESENT AND FUTURE.

PRISONERS OF POVERTY

WOMEN WAGE-WORKERS: THEIR TRADES AND THEIR LIVES.

By HELEN CAMPBELL,

Miss Melinda's Opportunity.

A STORY.

By HELEN CAMPBELL,

MRS. HERNDON'S INCOME.

A NOVEL.

By HELEN CAMPBELL.

THE WHAT-TO-DO CLUB.

A STORY FOR GIRLS.

By HELEN CAMPBELL.

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CHAPTER

I.

Both Sides of the Sea

II.

In Trafalgar Square

III.

The Sweating System in General

IV.

Among the Sweaters

V.

Child of the East End

VI.

Among the Dressmakers

VII.

Nelly, a West End Milliner's Apprentice

VIII.

London Shirt Makers

IX.

The Tale of a Barrow

X.

Street Trades Among Women

XI.

London Shop-Girls

XII.

From Covent Garden to the Eel-Soup Man in the Borough

XIII.

Women in General Trades

XIV.

French and English Workers

XV.

French Bargain Counters

XVI.

The City of the Sun

XVII.

Dressmakers and Milliners in Paris

XVIII.

A Silk Weaver of Paris

XIX.

In the Rue Jeanne D'Arc

XX.

From France To Italy

XXI.

Present and Future

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PRISONERS OF POVERTY ABROAD.

Table of Contents

---

CHAPTER I.

Table of Contents

BOTH SIDES OF THE SEA.

Table of Contents

With the ending of the set of studies among the working-women of New York, begun in the early autumn of 1886 and continued through several months of 1887, came the desire to know something of comparative conditions abroad, and thus be better able to answer questions constantly put, as to the actual status of women as workers, and of their probable future in these directions. There were many additional reasons for continuing a search, in itself a heart-sickening and utterly repellant task. One by one, the trades open to women, over ninety in number, had given in their returns, some of the higher order meaning good wages, steady work and some chance of bettering conditions. But with the great mass of workers, the wages had, from many causes, fallen below the point of subsistence, or kept so near it that advance was impossible, and the worker, even when fairly well trained, faced a practically hopeless future.

The search began with a bias against rather than for the worker, and the determination to do strictest justice to employer as well as employed. Long experience had taught what was to be expected from untrained, unskilled laborers, with no ambition or power to rise. Approaching the subject with the conviction that most of the evil admitted to exist must be the result of the worker's own defective training and inability to make the best and most of the wages received, it very soon became plain that, while this remained true, deeper causes were at work, and that unseen forces must be weighed and measured before just judgment could be possible. No denunciation of grasping employers answered the question why they grasped, and why men who in private relations showed warm hearts and the tenderest care for those nearest them became on the instant, when faced by this problem of labor, deaf and blind to the sorrow and struggle before them.

That the system was full of evils was freely admitted whenever facts were brought home and attention compelled. But the easy-going American temperament is certain that the wrong of to-day will easily become righted by to-morrow, and is profoundly sceptical as to the existence of any evil of which this is not true.

It's pretty bad, yes, I know it's pretty bad, said one large employer of women, and his word was the word of many others. But we're not to blame. I don't want to grind 'em down. It's the system that's wrong, and we are its victims. Competition gets worse and worse. Machinery is too much for humanity. I've been certain of that for a good while, and so, of course, these hands have to take the consequences.

Nothing better indicates the present status of the worker than this very phrase hands. Not heads with brains that can think and plan, nor souls born to grow into fulness of life, but hands only; hands that can hold needle or grasp tool, or follow the order of the brain to which they are bond-servants, each pulse moving to the throb of the great engine which drives all together, but never guided by any will of brain or joy of soul in the task of the day. There has been a time in the story of mankind when hand and brain worked together. In every monument of the past on this English soil, even at the topmost point of springing arch or lofty pillar, is tracery and carving as careful and cunning as if all eyes were to see and judge it as the central point and test of the labor done. Has the nineteenth century, with its progress and its boast, no possibility of such work from any hand of man, and if not, where has the spirit that made it vanished, and what hope may men share of its return? Not one, if the day's work must mean labor in its most exhausting form; for many women, fourteen to sixteen hours at the sewing machine, the nerve-force supplied by rank tea, and the bit of bread eaten with it, the exhausted bodies falling at last on whatever may do duty for bed, with no hope that the rising sun will bring release from trial or any gleam of a better day.

With each week of the long search the outlook became more hopeless. Here was this army crowding into the great city, packed away in noisome tenement houses, ignorant, blind, stupid, incompetent in every fibre, and yet there as factors in the problem no man has yet solved. If this was civilization, better barbarism with its chance of sunshine and air, free movement and natural growth. What barbarism at its worst could hold such joyless, hopeless, profitless labor, or doom its victims to more lingering deaths? Admitting the almost impossibility of making them over, incased as they are in ignorance and prejudice, this is simply another count against the social order which has accepted such results as part of its story, and now looks on, speculating, wondering what had better be done about it.

The philanthropist has endeavored to answer the question, and sought out many devices for alleviation, struggling out at last to the conviction that prevention must be attempted, and pausing bewildered before the questions involved in prevention. For them there has been active and unceasing work, their brooms laboring as vainly as Mrs. Partington's against the rising tide of woe and want and fruitless toil, each wave only the forerunner of mightier and more destructive ones, while the world has gone its way, casting abundant contributions toward the workers, but denying that there was need for agitation or speculation as to where or how the next crest might break. There were men and women who sounded an alarm, and were in most cases either hooted for their pains, or set down as sentimentalists, newspaper philanthropists, fanatics, socialists—any or all of the various titles bestowed freely by those who regard interference with any existing order of things as rank blasphemy.

Money has always been offered freely, but money always carries small power with it, save for temporary alleviation. The word of the poet who has sounded the depths of certain modern tendencies holds the truth for this also:—

"Not that which we give, but what we share,

For the gift without the giver is bare;

Who bestows himself, with his alms feeds three,

Himself, his hungering neighbor and me."

Yet it is the Anglo-Saxon conviction, owned by English and American in common, and unshaken though one should rise from the dead to arraign it, that what money would not do, cannot be done, and when money is rejected and the appeal made for personal consideration of the questions involved, there is impatient and instantaneous rejection of the responsibility. Evolution is supposed to have the matter in charge, and to deal with men in the manner best suited to their needs. If the ancient creed is still held and the worshipper repeats on Sunday: I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, he supplements it on Monday and all other days, till Sunday comes again, with the new version, the creed of to-day, formulated by a man who fights it from hour to hour:

"I believe in Father Mud, the Almighty Plastic;

And in Father Dollar, the Almighty Drastic."

It is because these men and women must be made to understand; because they must be reached and made to see and know what life may be counted worth living, and how far they are responsible for failure to make better ideals the ideal of every soul nearest them, that the story of the worker must be told over and over again till it has struck home. To seek out all phases of wretchedness and want, and bring them face to face with those who deny that such want is anything but a temporary, passing state, due to a little over-production and soon to end, is not a cheerful task, and it is made less so by those who, having never looked for themselves, pronounce all such statements either sensational or the work of a morbid and excited imagination. The majority decline to take time to see for themselves. The few who have done so need no further argument, and are ready to admit that no words can exaggerate, or, indeed, ever really tell in full the real wretchedness that is plain for all who will look. But, even with them, the conviction remains that it is, after all, a temporary state of things, and that all must very shortly come right.

Day by day, the desire has grown stronger to make plain the fact that this is a world-wide question, and one that must be answered. It is not for a city here and there, chiefly those where emigrants pour in, and so often, the mass of unskilled labor, always underpaid, and always near starvation. It is for the cities everywhere in the world of civilization, and because London includes the greatest numbers, these lines are written in London after many months of observation among workers on this side of the sea, and as the prelude to some record of what has been seen and heard, and must still be before the record ends, not only here, but in one or two representative cities on the continent. London, however, deserves and demands chief consideration, not only because it leads in numbers, but because our own conditions are, in many points, an inheritance which crossed the sea with the pilgrims, and is in every drop of Anglo-Saxon blood. If the glint of the sovereign and its clink in the pocket are the dearest sight and sound to British eyes and ears, America has equal affection for her dollars, in both countries alike chink and glint standing with most, for the best things life holds. It remains for us to see whether counteracting influences are stronger here than with us, and if the worker's chance is hampered more or less by the conditions that hedge in all labor. The merely statistical side of the question is left, as in the previous year's work, chiefly to those who deal only with this phase, though drawn upon wherever available or necessary. There is, however, small supply. Save in scattered trades-union reports, an occasional blue book, and here and there the work of a private investigator, like Mr. Charles Booth, there is nothing which has the value of our own reports from the various bureaus of labor. The subject has until now excited little interest or attention, save with a few political economists, and the band of agitators who are the disciples, not of things as they are, but things as they ought to be. One of the most admirable and well-officered organizations in New York, The Workingwoman's Protective Union, which gave invaluable assistance last year, has only a small and feeble imitation in London, in the Woman's Protective Union, founded by Mrs. Peterson, and now under the admirable management of Miss Black, but still struggling for place and recognition.

Thus it will be seen that the work to be done here is necessarily more sketchy in character, though none the less taken from life in every detail, the aim in both cases being the same—to give, as far as possible, the heart of the problem as it is seen by the worker, as well as by the eyes that may have larger interpretation for outward phases. The homes and daily lives of the workers are the best answers as to the comfort-producing power of wages, and in those homes we are to find what the wage can do, and what it fails to do, not alone for the East End, but for swarming lanes and courts in all this crowded London. The East End has by no means the monopoly, though novelists and writers of various orders have chosen it as the type of all wretchedness. But London wretchedness is very impartially distributed. Under the shadow of the beautiful abbey, and the towers of archiepiscopal Lambeth Palace; appearing suddenly in the midst of the great warehouses, and the press of traffic in the city itself, and thronging the streets of that borough road, over which the Canterbury pilgrims rode out on that immortal summer